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DVD Review: UFC 129

Up until the main event, UFC 129 was looking like one of the truly great UFC shows. The Roger’s Center was loaded with 55,000 fans that were loud and passionate and the card had, up to that point, delivered some memorable bouts.

Then the main event happened and it went flat.

UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre defended his title against Jake Shields in what was, by any measure, a disappointing bout. While some of that can be attributed to an inadvertent eye poke, in the second round, that left GSP with vision in just one eye, the champ was exceedingly cautious and seemed more concerned with not making any mistakes than stopping his challenger.

Few would argue that GSP is one of the greatest fighters in the history of MMA, but his style has been getting more and more cautious and, in many ways, almost programmed. The same few things over and over. The scary thing is that even when it is clear what he is going to do, few fighters can do anything about it. Jake was the first fighter to actually win a round in years.

But the rest of the card was fantastic. Canadian Mark Hominick lost to Jose Aldo, but spent most of the fifth round on top of him pounding away as the clock ticked down. Mark came on strong late in the bout, but simply did not have enough time to stop the champ.

MMA legend Randy Couture completed his career with a brutal KO at the hands of LHW contended Lyoto Machida. Many fighters would have looked for an easy winnable bout to leave on, but Randy asked for one of the most elusive fighters alive today. In his UFC career, almost all of Randy’s opponents were ranked in the top ten of their weight class at the time of the fight. Randy always sought out new challenges and will be remembered as one of the greats.

1 Pablo Garza subbedYves Jabouin with an awesome Flying Triangle Choke) at 4:31 of the first round.2 John Makdessi dropped (Spinning back fist) Kyle Watson 1:27 of the third round.3 Jason MacDonald choked out (Triangle choke) Ryan Jensen in the first round at 1:37.4 Ivan Menjivar TKO’d (Elbows and punches) Charlie Valencia just ninety seconds into their bout.5 Claude Patrick scored a unanimous decision over Daniel Roberts.6 Jake Ellenberger KO’d (via punch) Sean Pierson at 2:42 of the first round.7 Rory MacDonald controlled Nate Diaz and picked up a Unanimous decision.8 Benson Henderson over (Unanimous Decision) Mark Bocek.9 Vladimir Matyushenko stopped Jason Brilz with a punch twenty seconds into the bout.10 Lyoto Machida KO’d (Front Kick) Randy Couture 1:05 of the second round.11 Jose Aldo beat Mark Hominick in a five round Unanimous decision.
12 Georges St. Pierre over Jake Shields also in a five round Unanimous decision.

The Behind The Scenes focused on what the UFC did to prepare for running a show in the 55,000 seat Rogers Center. Most UFC cards are held in venues that max out at 18-20,000 so this was something totally new. Watching this, it is very clear that they pulled out all stops to make sure it was a great experience for all that attended.

This night had so many highlights that even the weakish main event can’t keep this from being a worthy purchase. UFC 129 is one of those “this was great, but…” events and folks should keep that in mind when looking at it.